Table of Contents
- CFP>AAR Chinese Religions Unit
- LECTURES > The Inaugural Chao
Visiting Chair in Buddhist Studies Lecture and Seminars at UC Berkeley
- New Book > Communities of Memory
and Interpretation
- CFP > Association for the Study
of Religion in Southern Africa
- Re: VACANCY> Heidelberg Center
for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) at Heidelberg University “Akademische/r
Mitarbeiter/in” (= Assistant Professor / Maître de Conférence)
by Charles Muller
Dear Friends of the Chinese Religions Unit,
The AAR
PAPERS
submission system is now open, and we encourage you to submit proposals to the
Chinese Religions Unit. As you may know, the AAR is introducing a new format
this year that encourages more 90-minute panels. We can sponsor either a) one
2-hour session and three 90-minute sessions or b) one 2.5-hour session, one
2-hour session, and one 90-minute session. Please keep this in mind as you
organize panels and roundtables.
The Chinese Religions Unit particularly invites proposals on the following
topics:
- Academic Ancestors in the
Study of Chinese Religions
- Buddhist Marxists or
Revolutionaries
- New Anthology on Buddhism
and Medicine (Authors Meet Critics panel)
- Islam in Pre-Modern China /
Monotheism and “sinicization”
- Vernacularization of
Religious Texts
- Regionalism in Chinese
Religion
- What is a Temple?
- Shamanism across Chinese
(and Korean?) History
- Digital Humanities in the
Study of Chinese Religions
- Translation and Terminology
in Chinese Religions (90-minute roundtable)
- Excavated Manuscripts and
Ancient Chinese Religions
- Rethinking the “Pure
Land in the Human Realm”
- Religions and Social
Problems in Contemporary East Asian Literature
- Interactions of
Confucianism with Buddhism and Daoism in the Medieval Period (with
particular emphasis on the idea of mourning attire, sangfu
喪服)
- Reading Romans in Beijing
If you’re interested in one of these topics, or if you have questions about
the Chinese Religions Unit, please contact Megan Bryson at
mbryson4@utk.edu and/or
Anna Sun at
suna@kenyon.edu.
The deadline for submitting proposals is Thursday, March 1st at 5:00 pm EST. We
hope to see you in Denver this November!
Best regards,
Megan and Anna
Co-chairs, Chinese Religions Unit
by Robert H Sharf
I wanted to announce the following two programs, associated with the new
Chao Visiting Chair in Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley.
Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 5 pm
Chao Presidential Chair Annual Lecture
Meditation and Nonconceptual Awareness
Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Evan Thompson, University of British Columbia
Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Berkeley
Supported by a generous gift from Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao.
Mindfulness meditation practices are often traditionally said to induce
“nonconceptual” forms of awareness, and scientists and clinicians often repeat
such descriptions. But what does “nonconceptual” mean? Clearly, without a
precise specification of what a concept or conceptual cognition is, the notion
of nonconceptuality is equally ill-defined. I present an account of concepts,
concept formation, and nonconceptual awareness based on combining ideas from
Buddhist philosophy and cognitive science. On the Buddhist side, I draw from
Dharmakīrti’s “exclusion” (
apoha) theory of concept formation and the
Yogācāra view of conceptual cognition as necessarily structured by the duality
of “grasper” (
grāhaka) and “grasped” (
grāhya) (i.e., by the
duality of subject versus object). On the cognitive science side, I distinguish
between sensory discrimination, perceptual categorization, and mental
conceptualization (the deployment of concepts in thought). According to both
Dharmakīrti’s “exclusion” theory and cognitive science considerations,
perceptual categorization is the most minimal form of conceptual cognition. It
structures our engagement with the world at a basic and prelinguistic level,
and it is motivationally and affectively biased. Combining these Buddhist and
cognitive science ideas provides a philosophically precise and empirically
useful way to define “nonconceptual awareness” and “nondual awareness.”
Nonconceptual mental events do not undergo or result from “exclusion” (
apoha),
and they do not involve perceptual categorization. Nondual awareness in
addition lacks the grasper-grasped (subject-object) structure and is not
motivationally and affectively biased. I apply this framework to scientific
studies of Buddhist mindfulness meditation practices, with attention to
experimental studies of the effects of these practices on the perception and
experience of pain. One take-home message is that cognitive scientists,
clinical scientists, philosophers, Buddhist scholars, and experienced
meditation practitioners need to work together. In particular, more attention
needs to be given to the cross-cultural philosophical issues about concepts
discussed in the lecture to clarify and advance the empirical investigation of
mindfulness meditation practices.
Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver and an Associate Member of the Department of Asian
Studies and the Department of Psychology. He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada. He is the author of
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and
Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia
University Press, 2015);
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the
Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007); and
Colour Vision:
A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge
Press, 1995). He is the co-author, with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch,
of
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT
Press, 1991, revised edition, 2017). He received his B.A. in Asian Studies from
Amherst College and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He
was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2013, and
held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York
University from 2002 to 2005. In 2014, he was the Numata Invited Visiting
Professor at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley. He has also held invited visiting appointments at the Institute for
Cross-Disciplinary Engagement (ICE) at Dartmouth College, the Faculty of
Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, the Ecole Polytechnique
(Paris), the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen,
and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Event Contact:
buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu,
510.643.5104
Tuesday and Thursday, March 13/15, 2018, 5-7 pm
Tuesday and Thursday, March 20/22, 2018, 5-7 pm
Chao Presidential Chair Annual Seminars
Emptiness, Mind, and Reality
Buddhist Interventions in the Realism Versus Anti-Realism Debate in
Contemporary Philosophy
370 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley
Supported by a generous gift from Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao.
Registration for the seminars is encouraged. Those registered will
have access to assigned readings through a dropbox link. Register by sending an
email to buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu.
Does it make sense to think that we inhabit a world that exists and has a
nature independently of how anyone takes it to be? Realists answer
yes,
and argue that objective knowledge is impossible unless it tells us how things
are independently of what anyone might think. Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy,
however, specifically the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra traditions, is usually
understood to be anti-realist, because it denies either that things have
intrinsic natures (Madhyamaka) or that things have intrinsic natures
independently of the mind (Yogācāra). Philosophical scholarship on Madhyamaka
and Yogācāra often relates them to anti-realist or idealist ideas in modern
European philosophy (e.g., from Kant, Wittgenstein, and Phenomenology). For
example, Madhyamaka is variously interpreted as a form of conventionalism,
global anti-realism, or quietism, while Yogācāra is sometimes read as a form of
transcendental phenomenology. These four seminars will examine core ideas from Madhyamaka
and Yogācāra in light of the resurgence of realism in contemporary philosophy.
For example, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that we can “retrieve”
realism by giving up the idea that knowledge consists of ideas in the mind
representing the external world; by denying this “meditational epistemology” we
can regain a view of knowledge as being based on our direct access to the
everyday world and the physical universe of science. Quentin Meillassoux argues
that the way to be a realist is to give up “correlationism,” which is the idea
that we only ever have access to the correlation between the mind and the world
and never to either one considered apart from the other, and he argues that the
reason to reject correlationism is that it cannot make sense of the meaning of
scientific statements about the world anterior to the appearance of human
beings. How should the contemporary Madhyamaka or Yogācāra philosopher respond
to these kinds of arguments? What contributions can Madhyamaka and Yogācāra make
to the contemporary debates about realism and anti-realism? These questions
will be the guiding ones of the four seminars. We will read selections (in
translation) from Nāgārjuna’s
Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā)
and
The Dispeller of Disputes (
Vigrahavyāvartanī), as well as
Vasubandhu’s
Treatise on the Three Natures (
Trisvabhāvanirdeśa),
together with relevant secondary readings relating these texts to contemporary
philosophy.
Seminar 1: March 13: Madhyamaka Versus Realism: Setting up the Debate
Seminar 2: March 15: Epistemology: Madhyamaka Versus Nyāya
Seminar 3: March 20: Yogācāra: Mind and World.
Seminar 4: March 22: Ambiguity, Paradox, Dialetheism, Quietism
Attendees at the Chao Lecture and Chao Seminars may also be interested
in the workshop on Conceptuality and Nonconceptuality in Buddhist Philosophy,
to be held on Friday-Sunday, March 23-25, 2018; see http://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/events/
Event Contact:
buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu,
510.643.5104
by Mario Poceski
Dear colleagues:
I would like to announce the publication of a new book:
Mario Poceski (ed.),
Communities of Memory and Interpretation:
Reimagining and Reinventing the Past in East Asian Buddhism (Hamburg
Buddhist Studies Series 10); Bochum: Projektverlag, 2018 (ISBN 978-3-89733-425-0).
For more details, see the publisher’s website:
https://www.projektverlag.de/schriftenreihen/Hamburg-Buddhist-Studies/Communities_of_Memory_and_Interpretation.
The book’s table of contents and intro are posted online (
https://www.academia.edu/34671731/), as is Chapter 3 (
https://www.academia.edu/35034125/).
Best,
Mario Poceski, PhD
Professor, University of Florida
Webpage:
people.clas.ufl.edu/mpoceski/
Publications:
florida.academia.edu/MarioPoceski
by Elisabetta Porcu
Dear Colleagues,
Apologies for cross posting.
Please find below the call
for papers for The 40th Congress
of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa, which will
take place at the University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban, South Africa) on 15-17
August 2018. The title of this year's conference is Religion,
History and Materiality. Papers in the field of Buddhism are welcome.
With kind regards,
Elisabetta Porcu
-------
Dr. Elisabetta Porcu
Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions
Undergraduate Program Convener
University of Cape Town
Department of Religious Studies
Director, Center for the Study of Asian Religions
(CSAR)
Founding Editor, Journal of Religion
in Japan (Brill)
Call for Papers
Religion, History and Materiality
15 – 17 August 2018
University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban, South Africa)
With the rise of contemporary
global neoliberal capitalism is a heightened focus on material objects as forms
of self-expression, identity formation, political affiliation and displays of
economic status. Over the last twenty years, the rise of technology has
also lead to a variety of new forms of materiality not seen before that have in
various ways shaped, informed or affected religions. Materiality is not a new
phenomenon and the history and expression of any religion is observable, at
least in part, in and through its relationship with materiality.
The 40th congress
of the ASRSA is an opportunity for us to reflect on the past, explore the
present and look to the future and the role of religion in society, through the
lens of materiality and religion.
We are inviting papers from
across disciplines such as religion studies, sociology, psychology,
anthropology, history, education, media and cultural studies to explore the
relationship between materiality and religion.
Some broad themes include:
- Thinking
about Religious Materiality and Theory
- Materiality
in the debates on Decoloniality and Religion
- Gender
and Religions
- Politics,
Materiality and Politics
- Media
and Religion
- Witchcraft,
Satan and Mediation
- Religion
and Education
- History,
Materiality and Religion in Africa
- Economics
and Religion
This particular ASRSA
conference is pack with moments that will celebrate the past and look to the
future.
The conference will begin by
commemorating the 70th anniversary of the death of Mahatma Gandhi: 1869-1948,
a religious political leader who had an interesting relationship with
materiality. Prof Judith Brown will give the 70th Gandhi Memorial Lecture on the 15 August 2018. The respondent will be Ms Ela
Gandhi, Gandhi's granddaughter who is also the Executive Trustee of the Gandhi
Memorial Trust.
On the 16August we will be
celebrating the launch of a Festschrift for Prof Martin Prozesky, a founding
member of ASRSA.
Our conference will end by
looking towards the future as we run a writing workshop for young researchers
helping them to turn their conference papers into journal articles.
Proposals for papers should
include:
- A
succinct title
- A
brief abstract (± 150 words)
- Author/s
name/s
- Author/s
institutional affiliation
- Contact
details
Proposal for a panel:
- A
succinct title
- A
brief abstract for the panel
- A
brief abstract for each paper (± 150 words)
- Author/s
name/s
- Author/s
institutional affiliation
- Contact
details.
Closing date for proposals:
1 March 2018
Acceptance of proposals:
Before 1 April 2018
Confirmation of attendance: 1
May 2018
by Michael Radich
Dear colleagues,
I recently posted this job ad on H-Net.
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=56364
It has come to my attention that there is an error in the heading. It
currently reads:
Heidelberg Institute of Transcultural Studies, Chair in Buddhist Studies
Lecturer, Tibetan language (classical and colloquial)
This is misleading (the subheading was accidentally carried over from an ad
for a different job). The header should read:
Heidelberg Institute of Transcultural Studies, Chair in Buddhist Studies
Akademische/r Mitarbeiter/in (Assistant Professor), Buddhist Studies
I am attempting to have the H-Net announcement corrected.
There is no intent to focus the position particularly on Tibetan Buddhism.
Applicants specialising in all sub-traditions are welcome to apply, although
applicants in Chinese Buddhism will be at a slight disadvantage, because this
will probably be regarded as too close an overlap with my own expertise.
Thank you, and regards,
Michael Radich
